


Only the Good Die Young

by ProgramasaurusRex



Category: Silicon Valley (TV)
Genre: F/M, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-19
Updated: 2019-05-09
Packaged: 2019-05-11 20:11:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14707196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProgramasaurusRex/pseuds/ProgramasaurusRex
Summary: Monica's a Catholic. Gilfoyle's a Satanist. Both of them are confused.





	1. Come Out, Virginia

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, I don't know what this is either.

Monica leaned back about two seconds after Gilfoyle leaned forward, nearly falling off her bar stool in the process.

"I'm sorry, what?" she sputtered, fixing Gilfoyle with her trademark wince.

She wasn't prepared for how crushed and flustered Gilfoyle looked. Unfortunately, the added vulnerability of rejection made him look even more attractive than usual. He was so stoic usually that she felt like she'd unlocked the secret level in a video game. Her senses were receiving so much conflicting information that she couldn't process it. She decided to switch on her 'hardass professional' persona until she had more information.

"You said you didn't like me like that," she said. "You literally said it. You know what would be refreshing, if one goddamn time, a guy friend actually said we were just friends and meant it!"

Gilfoyle's entire body sagged. "I thought ... we'd been hanging out a lot, and ..."

"I work in an industry that is ninety percent men!" she roared. "And I've been working eighty hour weeks lately. Surprise, asshole, most of my friends are guys!"

She curled an arm around her elbow. "And you know, I thought things might be different with you guys. God knows Raviga was one big frat party, what with the tequila, and the fucking shirts and skins basketball games at fucking Oracle arena ... I actually played once, you know, just to prove a point, even played in my sports bra, thought it would be empowering but actually they just laughed at me."

"Bream Hall wasn't like that though, was it?" Gilfoyle said, beginning to relax.

Monica looked up in surprise. Was he actually listening to what she was saying, even after discovering she didn't want to kiss him? He hadn't even made a crude joke about the mental image of her in a sports bra.

"No," she said. "Bream Hall was just ... weird. Like, I'd finally made partner, something I've been dreaming about since high school, but then ... I wasn't actually Laurie's partner at all. And all her weird social mannerisms got way more annoying when I had to spend that much time with her. And the meetings with clients, oh god, you should've seen her trying to talk to Keenan Feldspar. It was like if you put an iceberg and a forest fire in the same room, him trying soooo hard to get her to express any sort of excitement and she was just like ..." she did a highly accurate impression of Laurie's blank face.

"Smart lady," said Gilfoyle. "You guys were the only ones who saw through him. Sometimes being a cold fish has its advantages in the business world."

Monica exhaled. "Not exactly a great workplace though. And then when Richard finally invited me to come work for Pied Piper, it was like ... I mean I've known you guys for years, and you're, you know, mildly disastrous, but you've always been like this weird brotherhood. And I thought, finally, I'll get to handle money my own way, not have to answer to some other VC, and I'll be a part of ..."

"The guys," Gilfoyle supplied. "No, I get it." He shook his head sadly. "Got it. You're not attracted to me. Won't happen again."

Monica tilted her head to the side. "Well I didn't say that."

Gilfoyle frowned.

"Look, you are attractive, Gilfoyle. Physically, you are very much my type. So if I gave off ... signals ... I'm sorry."

"You don't want to mess up our professional relationship, then," said Gilfoyle.

"Yeah," said Monica. "That, and ... you're kind of an asshole sometimes. I've dated enough people like you in college to know I don't want that."

He wasn't being an asshole now though, she thought. He was actually pretty sensitive when he wanted to be. His eyes were so warm right now...

Noooooo, she also thought. He's doing this because he still wants to sleep with you! He's still an asshole! You can't "fix him"!

Gilfoyle pouted gorgeously at her. "I guess I kind of thought you saw through my, you know ... Once you get to know me, I don't have to be that way."

"You're still that way to other people though," she explained. "I don't want to date a guy who's nice to me but mean to his family, friends, coworkers, and the wait staff, who misses meetings as a power move and says racist shit for shock value. I want a boyfriend I can be proud to be with."

He looked even sadder than before, like maybe he was even seriously considering his flaws as a person. "Okay, so no charmingly acerbic boyfriend for you. We could still hook up, you know."

She looked around. "Actually I'm a Catholic," she whispered. "I don't do hookups."

Gilfoyle's eyes widened in surprise and amusement. "No shit. I thought you were too intelligent to go for the Nazarene."

Monica folded his arms. "Don't give me that intolerant bullshit. Also, not everybody has their religious beliefs literally tattooed on themselves, Hellspawn. You know what it's like being a Christian in the Valley."

He crossed one leg over the other slowly. "Just didn't think of you as the sexually repressed type."

"I have a vibrator," she growled. "Men aren't as important as they think."

"Aren't you divorced, anyway?" he asked.

"Widowed," she corrected him, a shadow crossing her heart.

"Shit," he said.

"And before you ask, we didn't even use birth control. My cervix is fucked up. So yes, I am Catholic, I don't have sex outside of marriage, and no, that does not reflect on my intelligence, or make me less of a woman, or less of an adult, or less enlightened, or oppressed. I've heard them all. It's my choice and it's none of your business."

She looked down at her glass of wine. She'd said more than she'd meant to. Why did Gilfoyle have to be so easy to talk to?

"I'm sorry about what I said about your late husband cheating on you," he said sincerely.

"Save it," she said. "So. Now that you know we have diametrically opposed personalities and religious beliefs, are you satisfied that we can't be together in any sense of the word? Or are you going to get all macho and decide that I'm just one more stupid hill to conquer?"

Gilfoyle's eyes gleamed, and she had her answer.


	2. Tell Me More

"Hey, you want to grab lunch?" Becky asked Monica as they exited the meeting.

Monica was slightly confused. Becky was funny, and they chatted sometimes, but they weren't that close, and they'd never gotten lunch together except as part of a larger group. 

She briefly considered how she felt about Becky as a potential friend. Pros: influential; might buy her some credibility with the other coders. Cons: probably dangerous if you pissed her off.

"Okay," said Monica.

Immediately after they'd sat down at the table, Becky asked, "So what's up with you and Gilfoyle?"

Monica wrinkled her nose. So that was why Becky had invited her. Of course no one could just want to be friends with her for no ulterior reason.

Becky laughed nervously. "I'm sorry. You know me, I'm direct. We don't have to talk about Gilfoyle. You've probably talked it to death with your girlfriends already anyway."

Nope, thought Monica.

Fuck it, thought Monica.

~~~

Gilfoyle watched Monica and Becky leave for lunch with a heavy heart. Truth be told, his CFO's words had gotten to him.

"What's with you?" Dinesh asked him from the other side of the break room counter.

Gilfoyle was not a chatty man by nature. But he and Dinesh had always had a sort of understanding in their friendship that either of them could call an automatic truce at any time to talk about A) girls, B) coworkers, or C) people who had insulted them. In this case, all three boxes were checked.

Gilfoyle sighed. "Let's go to Ignacio's," he said. "It's four dollar burrito day."

~~~

"Well, you know Gilfoyle," said Monica. "Take one good guess what the problem is."

"He's a trash fire of a person but he's hot?" said Becky.

Monica nodded, smiling.

"So just bang him and hang him!" Becky suggested.

Monica chuckled. "Okay, the thing is ..."

~~~

"I tried to kiss Monica," Gilfoyle said suddenly as they sat down in the back of the dingy Mexican restaurant.

"Holy shit," said Dinesh. "That's a bold move."

"Little bit," said Gilfoyle.

"So what happened?" asked Dinesh.

"She shot me down," said Gilfoyle. "Said I'm an asshole. Also, she's inexplicably Catholic, so I'm not good enough for her."

Dinesh munched on his tortilla chips for a minute, apparently looking for something to say. "That's rough," he finally said. "The Lady Mary treatment."

Gilfoyle raised an eyebrow.

"From Downton Abbey?" said Dinesh. "She's this sort of cold, holier than thou daughter of an earl ... You know what, forget it."

"I've never seen the show," said Gilfoyle. "But it sounds accurate."

"Bitches, man," said Dinesh.

Gilfoyle poured hot sauce despondently over his burrito. "No," he said. "I'm not pathetic enough to start stereotyping the entire female gender because of one bad experience."

Dinesh said, "That's fair."

Feeling faintly ridiculous, Gilfoyle tentatively asked, "If I were to ask you if I was an asshole, you would say yes, right?"

Dinesh took a big bite of his burrito.

~~~

"So you're a virgin?" asked Becky, blowing on her soup.

"No," said Monica.

"But I thought you just said Catholics waited until marriage," said Becky.

"And I did wait until marriage," said Monica.

"Oooh," said Becky. "So this is an adultery situation?"

Monica shook her head. "It was a couple years ago. I was dating this good Catholic guy, Tom. We'd only been together for a year, but he was terminally ill and needed health insurance. So, we got married. I guess I thought it was romantic or something. Three months later, I, uh, found out rather unexpectedly one night that the health insurance was the only thing he wanted from me. I demanded we get the marriage annulled, and then two weeks later he died."

Becky was clearly pleased to have gotten way more soap opera than she had signed up for, although she tried to disguise her feelings with a look of polite shock.

~~~

 

"I guess it was just unexpected to hear it from someone I wasn't even trying to piss off," said Gilfoyle.

"So you try to piss me off?" Dinesh asked. "I always thought it was an automatic response."

Gilfoyle folded his arms.

"Okay, no, you aren't always an asshole. Sometimes you are decent," said Dinesh.

Gilfoyle looked gratified. "I guess that's not good enough."

"Does it have to be Monica, though?" Dinesh asked. "I mean, we have to work with her on a daily basis now. Can you really see this ending well?"

"Best case scenario," said Gilfoyle, "we have a night of wild, mutually fulfilling sex. Even better case scenario, I get her to wear a nun outfit for the occasion. All sexual tension is cleared and neither of us mentions the matter again."

"And the worst case scenario?" prompted Dinesh.

Gilfoyle wiped off his mouth. "It's terrible, and she is so mortified that she quits her job to get away from me."

"We need her business skills," said Dinesh. "You'd better put your dick where your mouth is."

"Not physically possible," said Gilfoyle. "I've tried."

~~~

"So technically, I have had sex, like, four times maybe?" said Monica. "Not exactly great sex though."

"You poor thing!" laughed Becky. "It sounds like a dose of Satanist trash fire cock is exactly what you need."

"I don't know about that," said Monica.

"Oh, come on, you still believe in the sanctity of marriage after all that?" she asked.

"I could still hook up if I wanted," said Monica. "The Lord doesn't have anything to say about oral sex, so I've done that with a few other guys. But it's not the kind of thing I want to trust some random person with."

"You're saying you don't think Gilfoyle would go down on you?" Becky asked.

"I'm not sure if he would or not," said Monica. "Or if it would even be a good experience if he did. I'm ... a little picky about it."

"I know what you mean," said Becky. "I pretty much have to give dudes a Mercator projection of my vagina most of the time."

"And they're okay with that?" asked Monica.

"Well yeah," said Becky. "Look, guys want you to enjoy sex. A lot of them are actually relieved when you take control."

Monica pursed her lips.

"Afterwards, though, it might be awkward, right?" said Monica.

"I don't think Gilfoyle would be the kind of guy who bragged about sex to the whole office," said Becky. "He seems highly reluctant to talk about his personal life."

"That is an advantage," said Monica.

~~~

"Anyway, this is all irrelevant," said Gilfoyle as they walked back to the office. "As I said, she turned me down."

"Right," said Dinesh. "I guess the only thing you can do now is give her a good snubbing."

Gilfoyle grinned. "Now that's one of my strengths. My shoulders are so cold you could snowboard down them."

As it happened, Dinesh and Gilfoyle reached the elevator about thirty seconds before Monica and Becky.

It was a tense moment. But Gilfoyle held firm.

"Becky," said Gilfoyle, nodding.

"Hey, boss," said Becky. "Other boss," she added, nodding at Dinesh.

"Rebecca," said Dinesh, which caused both girls to crack up.

"Dinesh, I need to show you something in the stairwell," said Becky, and the two of them left.

Monica grinned stupidly at Gilfoyle as the elevator arrived. "Hey," she said.

Gilfoyle, for his part, stepped into the elevator, shut the door, pressed the button for their floor, and left her grinning at nothing.


	3. First Base

"So, why exactly are we taking the stairs?" asked Dinesh.

Becky looked at him. "Oh, do you not know about Monica and Gilfoyle?"

"I know she turned him down," said Dinesh. "Why are we trying to get them to be alone?"

She grinned. "A little bird told me she's had a sudden change of heart."

"Really? Gilfoyle seemed pretty down about it."

"Well," said Becky proudly, "I set her straight. She really needs to get laid."

"Hmmm," said Dinesh. "This could get interesting."

They reached the top of the stairs around the same time Gilfoyle did and abruptly stopped talking.

Dinesh followed Gilfoyle back to his workstation. "You didn't even stop the elevator for her?"

"I wanted to make it clear to her that I wasn't going to pursue her any further," Gilfoyle whispered.

"Becky says she's reconsidering, actually," said Dinesh.

Gilfoyle stopped walking.

"I guess the ball's in her court, then," he said cautiously.

Everyone returned to work. For Gilfoyle, this meant about twenty minutes of coding interrupted by ten minutes of questions from the junior developers, five minutes of messaging Jared about project timelines, and one minute of the man next to him trying to tell him something about college basketball. Repeat, repeat. There were definitely days when he wished he could be back in Erlich's garage. 

\---

"So he just shut the elevator door in my face!" Monica was telling Becky over by the printer. "Well, I guess that's over."

"Not necessarily," said Becky. "I told Dinesh you'd changed your mind. He's bound to tell Gilfoyle."

"Oh, for fuck's sake, is this middle school or something?" Monica whispered.

Becky smiled and shrugged. "Just trying to help."

Monica went back to her desk. This was ridiculous. She was too old to be playing games like this. At the end of the day, she was just going to text Gilfoyle and tell him how it was.

\---

Gilfoyle had had little direct contact with Monica the rest of the afternoon, thankfully, so he was surprised when he saw a text from her at the end of the day.

Monica: Home plate is still out, but how do you feel about the other three bases?

Gilfoyle waited eight minutes, then replied.

Gilfoyle: I like them.

Four minutes later, she replied

Monica: Meet me by my car in ten minutes.

Gilfoyle did. As he approached, he saw her sitting casually on the hood of her Chevy in the parking garage.

"You're sure about this?" he asked her calmly. "You're not going to keep playing hot and cold?"

"Nope," she said. "I was thinking tonight actually, if you've got the time. We could go back to my condo."

She was shaking. He took her hand. "Nervous?"

"A little," she admitted. "Haven't done this in awhile."

"You mentioned the baseball system," he reminded her. "Is that what you grew up on? One date per base?"

"We're not dating," she said.

"Even so," he said, stroking her fingers, "it might help you feel more relaxed than just diving in. How about we climb into the back seat of your car and pretend we're at the end of a long evening of wholesome family entertainment at the local drive in movie theater?"

Monica nodded. She slid into the back seat. Gilfoyle followed her, shut the door, and slowly took her in his arms, pulling her in for a long hug. She relaxed against him, arms around his waist, radiating innocence and trust, as he stroked her hair. When he felt like enough time had passed, he eased away a bit, looked down, and took her chin in his hand. He kissed her slowly and gently, one arm still around her shoulders, letting her set the pace. When she opened her mouth wide like an invitation, his tongue slid in for a little visit. Then, he pulled her back into his chest for some more cuddle time, his faded blue flannel shirt against her crisp white button-down.

At first he had just been trying to get her comfortable enough to slip into a seductive mindset. But he was surprised at how relaxing he was finding it simply to share a moment of intimate rest with a woman with no expectation of anything further. A good way to end a long work day. Presently, he pulled away from her completely.

"I look forward to our second date," he remarked, and left before she could answer.

\---- 

Monica climbed into the driver's seat and drove home, still thinking about how good his warm arms had felt around her. There was something about making out with someone she had no intention of getting serious with, purely for the sake of it, like ice cream before dinner. And there was definitely something about Gilfoyle.

Monica had high standards for the men she dated. She liked them good and polite and responsible and ambitious. She herself spent so much time overthinking her life, from career advancement to financial planning to exercising to chasing a leadership role in her church's youth ministry department, that she reasoned that only a person who shared her drive could ever really understand her. She wanted her and her future partner to chase self-improvement together, and to raise children in a stable environment.

Working with Gilfoyle, she had discovered that he was shockingly cavalier about breaking any sort of written or unwritten rule, to the point of taking pleasure in it. While the others were networking, chatting about video game tournaments and NASA press releases, Gilfoyle was driving everybody off with his loud music. He deliberately showed up only to meetings that were more than half over. He said rude things to clients, too, the kind of things Monica wished she could say but never felt secure enough to. As a result, Richard started leaving him out of meetings with clients, which was of course what he'd been after in the first place.

And yet, he had serious career ambitions, too, in his own way. He'd played a huge role in growing his startup, literally building their first server. She still remembered the fierceness with which he had advocated for cryptocurrency. He was responsible enough to pull that all nighter with her to save the company. In a way, he was so driven that he couldn't be bothered with rules that got in the way of his raw talent.

And he was good in his own lawless way, too, in a way that had nothing to do with commandments or charities or putting on the appearance of goodness at all. He was known for his blanket refusal to buy anything anyone's kids were selling at the office, and his name was conspicuously absent from all of the sympathy cards Jared painstakingly sent around for ailing employees. But he had a way of looking out for his friends without them noticing.

Monica climbed the stairs to her third floor walk up apartment. Entering the bedroom, she removed her blazer, unbuttoned her blouse, and slid off her skirt, hanging them all up in the section of her closet set aside for clothes she needed to send to the dry cleaner. She removed her black heels and placed them on the shoe rack. Next, she peeled off her panty hose and unhooked her bra, laying them in the hamper, relishing the freedom of being out of her sweaty office clothes at last. She slid into bed in just her underwear. Still thinking of Gilfoyle's beard against her face, she pulled her vibrator out of the nightstand, rubbed some moisture from her vagina onto her clit, and enjoyed the sort of sleepy masturbation that led smoothly into a pre-dinner nap.


End file.
